Top blogging, first quarter of 2024

These are the most-viewed posts of mine within the past three months. That doesn't mean all of them are from the last three months. I'll indicate where not.

No. 10? More oopses at r/Academic Biblical, with the worst I documented being some nutter about "666."

No. 9? A two-paragraph brief from way back in 2007. "Patriots, gurus, scoundrels, martyrs" was, I think, the second post here to draw vigorous protests from "Addle Allone." I have one suspicion who that person is, but am not sold on it.

No. 8? Yes, Morton Smith is indeed the forger of Secret Mark. And, a 2023 book won't convince me otherwise.

No. 7? Some counterfactual/alt history about Caesar and the Ides of March.

No. 6? Trending from 2020 because I posted it at Reddit's r/classicalmusic, my saying at that time that I would take a pass on Fabio Luisi helming the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

No. 5? From last year, about fascism in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. (Since posting it, I have crossed swords on Twitter with the chief fascist nutter of the story, Corey Mahler. Unfortunately, I didn't screengrab and now I'm blocked. IIRC, it was him spouting false flag nuttery about the Crocus attack in Moscow.)

No. 4? I murdered Robert Sapolsky, figuratively speaking, over "Determined."

No. 3? From last fall, and getting new reading from posting at a biblical criticism group, obviously NOT the blocked-to-me r/academicbiblical, my piece on Josiah not being Josiah, proto-Deuteronomy and more.

No. 2? The second from 2007, "more proof the Buddha was no Buddha," and possibly the first piece of mine to draw that vigorous reaction from Addle Allone. Allone, maybe, but not alone in reacting to this. Oh, while we're there? Buddhism is still a religion.

No. 1? Andy Clark is all wet as a philosopher of consciousness.

Andy Clark: Another theory of, and theorist of, consciousness that isn't

The Experience Machine by Andy Clark
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Better than Anil Seth, but that's a low bar to clear.

But, that's a good starting point for this review, which, as normal, is extended beyond my Goodreads one.

“Predictive processing” sounds more accurate than “controlled hallucination,” especially one notes the denotative meaning of “hallucination.” (I suspect that’s why some cognitive scientists, philosophers etc., use the latter. Anil Seth, who is IMO a cheap knockoff of Clark [and a blurber of this book!] comes immediately to mind. Hence, my opening paragraph.)

Second, Clark explains the whole idea of feedback loops, and partial parallels to empiricism, better than Seth's book. Again, though, a low bar to clear.

In an mildly extended Interlude about halfway in, Clark dives head-on into “the hard problem of consciousness.” Contra a David Chalmers, he indicates that it’s at least a part of preconceptions, as he first tackles the “meta-problem,” that of the temptation of various dualisms. After that, he says the “hard problem” will look different than often presented, especially if we look at hidden tangled expectations re things like those “pesky qualia.”

But, he never does really seem to tackle the issue as head-on as he promises. More below.

That said, does Clark have it all right? Perhaps, per one of his strongest critics at the end of a New Yorker piece, he’s offering up a Panglossian view of how the mind works.

Per his primary critic, Jakob Hohwy, and going beyond him? Placebos don’t always work. Certainly, “positivity” in attempting to reframe mental illness doesn’t work. (Clark’s ideas on depression don’t seem that different than CBT. His ideas on schizophrenia seem both superficial and largely wrong.) And, the idea that you might even “reset” or “repredict” physical health skirts somewhere halfway close to New age quackery.

And, other aspects? His “interlude” doesn’t really deal that much with pesky qualia. It ignores that qualia are of multiple types. It ignores that some are likely more “grounded” in top-down empirical knowledge than he will admit. “Redness” is an obvious example, with the only differentiating factor being the exact peak frequency in red wavelength in nanometers for your red cone cells vs mine. That said, what does a weaker version of Sapir-Whorf have to say about qualia? If your language doesn’t have a word for “yellow,” is there no “yellow qualia”? What if there’s not even no word, but no concept for, “schadenfreude,” to get to something very non-empirical.

In short, like Seth, the energy reduction angle, re Karl Friston and his free-energy principle, of predictive processing is a no-brainer. But, not unique to this theory. Any theory of cognition in general has something like that at base. Again, though, a low bar to clear, and broadly similar ideas are tied not just to other theories of consciousness, but theories of how the human mind in general operates.

There's one other issue. Predictive processing sounds a lot like AI-type feedback loops, with the "feedback" and "course corrections" being straight and neat. We know, contra many philosophers and cognitive scientists still trying to go down this road, that the brain isn't a computer, or that the embodied brain isn't a robot. Clark may have smoked some of Dan Dennett's shorties from "The Mind's I," but that doesn't make him, or them, any more true.

In addition, while the full schmeer of Clark's idea may have a fair amount of truth for homo sapiens, I doubt it, further "down" the animal evolutionary world, talking about evolutionary animal psychological development. (There's a phrase for a non-Ev Psych approach to that, but I can't remember what it is.)

Also, the "prediction" involved with tracking a batted baseball has been discussed elsewhere, and is not the same as predicting another human being's mental changes. In short, it doesn't well allow for theory of mind. Combine these last two paragraphs together, and while Clark may have a partial theory of human consciousness, it's not complete for humans or non-humans, especially not for the non-human portions of consciousness.

Beyond that, I don't know if Clark disses a Dan Wegner the way Anil Seth did, but it's something to keep in mind. In short, there seems to be, in addition to this being only a partial explainer, an anti-Ockhamite problem. One shouldn't multiply entities beyond necessity, but one shouldn't cast necessary ones away, either. 

Finally, I think there’s a fair amount of psychological projection behind Clark’s theorizing. Probably any philosopher with a theory of consciousness does some of that (see "Dennett, Daniel"), but the New Yorker piece ("primary critic," above) plus Clark's own comments cued me in to the projection level being high here. So, no, don't hang your hats, cranes or skyhooks on what Clark is preaching.

View all my reviews

Nicholas Humphrey drops new ideas on origin of consciousness

Per an Aeon interview about a new book of his, the British philosopher has ideas that I would very largely agree with.

His analogy with "Moby-Dick" is very good, as an introduction to the idea that sensation, vs mere perception, is about brain narratives.

And, the kicker? (Aside from him ignoring or not knowing, or omitting them because extinct, that dinosaurs were also warm-blooded.) Interesting. Warm-bloodedness, and not only greater control of one's self vis a vis one's environment, but more rapid, and more active, response to it? Makes sense. And, especially since I have noted the amount of hype about the octopus in recent years, I agree with his take on them not demonstrating sentience. And, yes, it is hype.

And, I'll keep an eye open for his book!

Anil Seth: a new thinker about thinking; but is he actually new?

He's new to me, at least, but this Guardian interview, with discussion of his ideas and his new book, means I think I need to do more to rectify that.

He says Dan Dennett was the biggest influence on his current ideas, but yet that he's plenty willing to argue with him. From the interview, "subselves" and an evolutionary battle idea on how consciousness emerges from fights between these subselves seems to be the biggest influence.

Based on the famous permanent amnesia case of Clive Waring, he then says it seems that personhood is not totally tied to explicit memory and related issues. To some degree, this would tie with subselves and multiple drafts (but refined from what Dennett says).

As for Dennett's denial of a Cartesian theater? What if, going beyond Seth in this interview, there is such a thing, but it's not permanent or ingrained. What if, per Seth and other new thinkers, that's part of our "hallucinating" our sense of the world "out there" into existence?

As for Dennett's refusal to deny, or even discuss, the non-existence of a Cartesian free willer on parallel grounds, will Seth discuss that or not? Will he discuss how much Dennett ripped off from HIS mentor, Gilbert Ryle, then tried to palm Ryle's ideas off as his own?

In light of all of the above, he has a great new riff on Descartes:

“I predict myself, therefore I am.”

Well put, per Tevye!

The book is "Being You."

It sounds interesting ... but, if Seth is really that enthusiastic about Dennett, it also sounds like something that needs to be carefully eyeballed. His Ted Talk may have had more than 10 million hits, but other than the idea that consciousness is a controlled hallucination, there's really nothing new.

AND? If he is a fan of Dennett (and hopefully, cutting through the chase, Ryle), then who's controlling the hallucination? Oops.

In addition, if he appeared on Sam Harris' podcast to talk to him, per his bio page on his website, he needs to be read very carefully. (The podcast is 115, yes ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN, minutes long. Pass. And not linking, even with a no-follow, as it's on Harris' website.)

==

Sidebar: On the subselves and struggle, the Guardian also interviewed David Eagleman a couple of months ago. Read it, too. (He's a bit too reductionist for my taste, and per an old piece on my main blog, too much a techie-enthusiast within neuroscience, but still.)

Is the Internet conscious?

Now, my philosophy has no problem with imputing consciousness to non-carbon beings or creatures. (We would, of course, call anything with consciousness a "being" or a "creature" and not just an "it.")

Well, Massimo Pigliucci has a good discussion of claims about the consciousness, or not, of the Internet, here.

I agree with him that today's Internet is not conscious, but that, at some unknown date, it may become so. I also agree with what I take as his tacit thought that the "unknown date" isn't happening in the next few years. Sit down, Ray Kurzweil.

That said, especially on issues like this, Massimo gets some ... "interesting" comments and commenters. Baron and Dave S, definitely, on issues like this.

Per Baron and some of his interests in other blogs and such, I riff on Hanns Johst (not Hermann Göring): "When I hear the word 'noetic,' I reach for my revolver!"

My thought? Without going down Kurzweil's road, or Michio Kaku's, but with taking Lynn Margulis' idea of "symbiosis" beyond just carbon-based life (sorry, Massimo, you're being too restrictive there), we might talk about a symbiosis for a new type of consciousness at some point.

But, even that, rather than just talk about conscious humans being helped by the Internet, is some point away. And, if that symbiosis does become conscious, it will surely eliminate for now and beyond, the idea of the Internet having a free-standing, non-symbiotic consciousness.

Consciousness is not the same as attentiveness

It's long been established that we have what could be called "subconscious attentiveness," which can cause things such as certain types of psychological priming through images being presented to people, but too quickly for them to be consciously aware of the images.


It now appears, in the latest in attempts to unravel human consciousness, that this cuts both ways.


But, the story doesn't go as far as it could, both on speculation and on Wittgenstein-like questions on our use of language on these issues.


Perhaps "consciousness," "attentiveness" and "awareness" need more precision in usage in such aspects. Or maybe they need to be redefined to some degree. Or replaced.


Whether language will be crafted to this end remains to be seen.

Does consciousness go down to neuronal level?

Antonio Damasio, one of the leaders in the investigation of what makes humans conscious, certainly thinks that's what will prove out.


And, because of the number of connections each individual neuron has, that could mean that consciousness for a computer or robot may be quite some ways off, still.


Back to futurist dreamland for Ray Kurzweil, Michio Kaku and others, in that case.


Even if Damasio isn't totally on the right trail, I think he's headed in the right direction. Now, what led to the precursor of consciousness to "emerge" at some level of animal life? How much brain complexity was needed? Is neuronal number per body weight, or neuronal connections per body weight, a power law situation?

The state of consciousness studies

Science News has two excellent articles on where we are at, part of a just-started ongoing series.

The first, by Tom Siegfried, follows in many of the footsteps of Douglas Hofstadter to talk about consciousness and self-referential systems. The title of "Self as Symbol" gives some hint of where he's headed. And, he says self-referentiality may actually deepen our eventual understanding of consciousness rather than acting as a barrier.


Laura Sanders looks at the neuroscience side of the coin, and what brain studies are telling us these days. Not too much of high specificity, but we're getting ideas on how to refine, and in some ways change, our searching.

Free will not so free? And not so human-specific?

I've long been of the opinion that "free will" vs. "determinism" is, if not a false dilemma, at least something close — a pair of false polarities, rather than something on a continuum.

(I've also been of the opinion, taking Dan Dennett's stance on consciousnesss that there's no "Cartesian meaner" to its logical conclusion — as does Daniel Wegner and others, I'm not alone — that there's no conscious, central, controlled location for free will in humans, as well. That is, there's no "Cartesian free willer" either. But, I digress.)

There's a German-based neuroscientist who agrees with me on the "polarities" angle. But, that's not all.

Bjoern Brembs also says that this free will — free will within constraints — is exhibited by animals, too.

Brembs and others have used mathematical models to simulate brain activity on a computer, finding that what worked best was a combination of deterministic behaviour and what is known as stochastic behaviour - which may look random but actually, in time, follows a defined set of probabilities.

Personally, I actually don't see this as that big of a deal. Given that consciousness itself is understood as being on some sort of continuum, rather than "we conscious humans" vs. "you unconscious animals," how could a will, and a will that is partially free, also not exist, and again, on a continuum?

That then said, I do find it a bit more questionable to extend some degree of free will, as Brembs does, all the way down to the level of flies, just as I would find it questionable to attribute consciousness to an animal with so few neurons.

To talk about a dog, or the old laboratory vertebrate standby, the lab rat, as having some degree or type of free will? Yes. The laboratory insect standby, a fruit fly? Per Carl Sagan, that's an extraordinary claim. I expect more evidence.

I'll stand by for more research; this is surely going to be a hot topic not just for months but for years.

Do you have free will? Is that even a discussable issue?

Are our selves free willers, or determined selves? Galen Strawson discusses both sides of the issue in a great "Stone" column at the NYT.

That said, Strawson, the son of renowned British philosopher P.F. Strawson, missed one big issue or two.

Namely, how much of our actions are conscious, can "free will" even be spoken of sensibly at a level of allegedly unitary consciousness, can we, though, talk of subconscious subselves having free will, etc.

Anyway, overlooking Strawson's lapses, he does give fair play to both sides, while shooting down things like the New Agey myth that quantum mechanics has disproved determinism. (Certainly, if one is an Einsteinian "naive realist" on quantum mechanics, it's clear all QM did was made determinism more probabilistic at the ultimate fine-grained level. Even under other models of understanding of QM, reality can still be deterministic above the quantum level. It's like a state change, if you will, and to not "get that" is, to quote a peer of Strawson's dad, Gilbert Ryle, to make a category mistake.

That said Strawson ultimately argues that believing in both some form of determinism and in moral responsibility (which is where many people want to sink determinism) is possible, maybe even quite possible.

I can’t do better than the novelist Ian McEwan, who wrote to me: “I see no necessary disjunction between having no free will (those arguments seem watertight) and assuming moral responsibility for myself. The point is ownership. I own my past, my beginnings, my perceptions. And just as I will make myself responsible if my dog or child bites someone, or my car rolls backwards down a hill and causes damage, so I take on full accountability for the little ship of my being, even if I do not have control of its course. It is this sense of being the possessor of a consciousness that makes us feel responsible for it.”

I partially disagree, answering with a mix of "Mu" from Zen Buddhism via "Goedel, Escher, Bach" and Dennett's idea of subselves. I don't think you can discuss this issue otherwise.

Just how conscious are we?

New Scientist appears to transcend its slide into the crapper of the past few years with a serious of vignettes on different aspects of consciousness.

First, unconscious reactions that we later label as products of conscious free will appear to occur seconds before a "conscious determination," not just Benjamin Libet's well-known 300 millisecond delay.

Second, it appears that consciousness is not "vs." unconsciousness, but that the two are on a spectrum.

In light of all of this, in addition to it becoming clearer that the human mind does not operate like a computer, it's clearer that we are a long ways away from creating a conscious machine, something that would pass a Turing test when viewed by a true skeptic.

New indications of what drives consciousness

A theory known as "global workspace" seems to be getting some tentative empirical confirmation, including that "the researchers found a 300 ms delay between presenting the stimuli and witnessing this explosion of neural activity," which may be analogous to the famous half-second delay between starting what turns out to be a conscious action and actually consciously willing to do it.

That said, per David Chalmers, this study seems to answer an "easy question" about consciousness, or a couple, more than any "hard questions."

The human brain, simulated?

In Switzerland, a neuroscientist is hoping to use an IBM supercomputer much more powerful than Deep Blue to do just that.

That's interesting enough. The real thing is that Henry Markram says we (mainly, his professional colleagues being referenced) need to ditch many of their scientific preconceptions about how individual neurons, neuron groups and areas of the brain work.

The story describes how he is modeling the simulation on actual "slices" of mouse neocortex.

Consciousness not in the brain? I disagree

Dr. Ray Tallis raises some interesting points, but I think, ultimately, his psychological and philosophical objections fall short of explaining away the potential for the scientific search for consciousness as exemplified by cognitive science, etc.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527427.100-you-wont-find-consciousness-in-the-brain.html?full=true

Dead salmon, live MRI

A salmon showed human-type emotional responses to stimuli, when its brain was subject to functional magnetic resonance image scanning.

Just one problem: the salmon was dead.

THE TRUE ORIGINAL SIN

Eat, sleep, defecate.
If you’re lucky, have a little fornicate.
In times between, do a little work
For a little bit of money
To afford the food to eat,
And the place to sleep,
And a spot to defecate the food you eat,
And a room for a lucky little fornicate.
Maybe develop some hobbies, and interests,
Work harder, make some money for “fun.”
If you fornicate long enough and often enough,
And luckily, or unluckily, enough,
Have some kids.
Work harder to earn money for them.
Lather, rinse, and repeast.
As your hair gets gray, your face wrinkles, and your muscles sag,
While rich people with more and better shampoo try to hide this,
Life moves on.
Then, one day, go to a poetic “sleep eternal,”
Even though there’s no “you” to know it’s “eternal.”
Finally, the true original sin, the curse of consciousness,
Is removed.

Steve Snyder
May 17, 2009

Priming behavior study gaining speed

As this Washington Post story shows, priming behavior is one of the greatest illustrations of the power, depth and breadth of the subconscious mind. In other words, Dan Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained,” even if it has the right theory, explains only about 10-20 percent of the mind anyway.

Roy Baumeister compares the subconscious to the conscious as hot-wiring a car vs. using keys in the ignition.

Mark Shaller has more:

“Sometimes nonconscious effects can be bigger in sheer magnitude than conscious ones because we can’t moderate stuff we don’t have conscious access to, and the goal stays active.”

I’ve never believed the Hindu/New Age claim that we only use 10 percent of our brains. However, it might be true that only 10 percent of our mind is conscious.

Priming behavior study gaining speed

As this Washington Post story shows, priming behavior is one of the greatest illustrations of the power, depth and breadth of the subconscious mind. In other words, Dan Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained,” even if it has the right theory, explains only about 10-20 percent of the mind anyway.

Roy Baumeister compares the subconscious to the conscious as hot-wiring a car vs. using keys in the ignition.

Mark Shaller has more:

“Sometimes nonconscious effects can be bigger in sheer magnitude than conscious ones because we can’t moderate stuff we don’t have conscious access to, and the goal stays active.”

I’ve never believed the Hindu/New Age claim that we only use 10 percent of our brains. However, it might be true that only 10 percent of our mind is conscious.

Consciousness and its disillusionments

Is consciousness all that it’s cracked up to be? For example, even if Dan Dennett’s explanation of consciousness in “Consciousness Explained” is correct, what of it?

If, to riff on the New Age urban legend that we only use 10 percent of our brains, it turns out that only 10 percent of our mental activity is conscious, then Dennett hasn’t explained very much.

But, the idea that much of our mental activity is unconscious is scary to many people. This includes not just John and Jane Does, but many educated people and even a certain amount of cognitive scientists. It’s of a partial piece, at least, with fears over the lack of free will. On that subject, note that even a Dennett, while denying the existence of a Cartesian Central Meaner, has spilled ink enough for two whole books illogically continuing to defend the existence of free will.

Some parts of fears of unconscious mental behavior touch on its free will aspects. A fair amount do. Probably the second biggest fear behind worries about unconscious mental activity is the risk that humans will look more, well, animalistic.

And that’s precisely what “The New Unconscious” addresses. Editors Ran Hassin, James Uleman and John Bargh have selected some of the best in research analysis and other writings on the definition, parameters and role of the unconscious mind as currently understood by cognitive science.

Without any of its authors putting percentages on conscious versus unconscious mental activity, the cognitive science essays collected here ask — and in large degree answer — just what all is happening in our minds out of the reach of our own selves.

Does subliminal programming work? Yes, to a moderate to modest extent, depending on the exact goals of specific subliminal ideas. At the same time, no, if it’s on New Ageish self-help audio tapes; to the degree subliminal programming works, it works far better with visual than with audio programming.

Related to that, do various forms of unconscious priming — such as priming one toward certain emotional or belief states, or reinforcing old ones — work? The answer is a pretty strong yes. Sometimes, as in how racial attitudes can be effective, this is somewhat scary, yet challenging to national issues of sociology, indicating that at least some change in racial attitudes in America is in fact, pardon the pun, only skin deep.

Can unconscious thoughts and processes be controlled? The answer appears to be yes. Does this mean we have unconscious free will? The authors of the main study in this area of the book say yes. They don’t answer, though, how that would square with the absence of a Central Meaner, and whether it might not imply an Unconscious Central Meaner. I say it does, until the authors further develop their idea. However, that’s just their theory of unconscious free will. Unless one believes that lack of a conscious central meaner is some weird form of an emergent property, I don’t see how unconscious free will, let alone an implied unconscious Cartesian Meaner, can actually exist. I charge that they don’t, and that Jack Glaser and John Kihlstrom need to do more work.

But that’s not all in here. Tying in to Malcolm Gladwell, the relative accuracy of thin-slice, quick-slice judgments of other people has been clinically upheld.

The power of assimilating to other people’s mannerisms and becoming unconscious mimics has also been demonstrated. Ditto on mimicry of emotional affect, similarity judgments and other things.

Our minds are less our own than we thought.

Of course, with no Cartesian Meaner, they’re really not “our” minds anyway.

Another way to look at this honestly is as Timothy D. Wilson says in “Strangers to Ourselves”:

When (Freud) said that consciousness is the tip of the iceberg, he was short of the mark by quite a bit — it may be more the size of a snowball on top of that iceberg.

Or, in my own words, you and I are not who we think we are; above all, since, like Ivory Soap, our minds are 99 and 44/100 percent unconscious, we can’t think who we are because it’s inaccessible.

Meanwhile, Jim Grigsby and David Stevens provide some parallel lines of thought in their “Neurodynamics of Personality.”

At one point, they refer to D.M. Buss, who says consciousness may just be a spandrel. In other words, it may just be an evolutionary byproduct of some evolutionary guided process for some other facet of mental development, i.e., consciousness itself was not evolutionarily selected.

Their own thoughts on the self is that there is no such thing as a unitary self; rather, a la some ideas of William James:

“The ‘self’ is actually composed of a large number of (often overlapping) internal representations of who one takes oneself to be.”

From there, I infer they are thinking along the lines of cognitive philosopher Dennett’s “multiple drafts” theory of consciousness. The internal representation that best survives the Darwinian mental battle (to riff on Dennett) and is most adapted for the psychological development space at that moment, is who we are at that time. William James, from a different perspective, was thinking somewhat along those lines when he talked of different social selves; however, he did not incorporate the idea of internal representations affecting selfhood.

And, speaking of Dennett …

One of Grigsby’s and Stevens’ most important statements goes contrary to the sometimes humdrum right, sometimes brilliantly right, sometimes humdrum wrong, and sometimes quite brilliantly wrong Dennett. They stress that, contra Dennett, the human mind is notalgorhithmic; in other words, in terms of cognitive science, different types of software may not be mappable onto different types of hardware.


Note: The specific aspects of study of the unconscious mind covered in this book relate closely to several posts on this blog with the common thread of “Who Am I,” all arguing that selfhood is less unitary than our conscious minds would have us believe, and also less under conscious control.

See here for parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.